I am a really big fan of DS9 and TNG but, except for a season of P*card and Discovery that I regret, I've never watched anything else. So I jumped into watching TOS sometime ago and fell off. But I'm back into it now and somewhere in the second season. Because it was so fun to just blab about my time watching DS9 on twitter a few years ago, I thought I'd continue that here and log the episodes I'm watching.
This weekend my gf and I watched a few. It was her first time seeing ST. I told her just to look into the premises of the the shows and see which cast looked the coolest, then make your choice of which show we should watch based on that. For some reason I was surprised that she chose TOS. But she really does love mid-century exotica and TOS has its quaint, problematic charms that I think make it seem a little more directly interesting than if you were to stare at pictures of the 90s shows without any foreknowledge.
TOS S02E07 - "Catspaw"
There can't be many other episodes that could work as a better introduction to Star Trek TOS for someone. Catspaw has literary pastiche, cool clothes, mystery and atmosphere, trade-mark womanizing, low-budget but still effective special effects, and fun action between Kirk and Spock; it's like the vertical slice of a TOS episode. I loved the very loud black cats that played the shapeshifting Sylvia and Korob's fat Anton Levey cosplay. The final reveal (depicted in the screenshot above) of the couple's true form is delightful, in that it is both easy to have with it at its expense and strangely pathetic to inspire the proper sense of awe the plot calls for at that time.
TOS S0208 - "I, Mudd"
When the conceit for this one finally showed itself completely, I figured it was going to be a joyless display of midwit science-fiction propped up on corny sexism. And it was certainly a good portion of that, but we had fun trying to figure out if any of the actors playing these identical fembots actually looked alike, and watching Harry and the Enterprise crew team up to confuse the androids with nonsensical contradictions and gags. The thing that annoyed me the most, which felt most emblematic of TOS' banal 20th-century scifi sexism, was Uhura's extremely off-character display of vanity when she was offered "everlasting life, and beauty" by Mudd and the androids. When Kirk is a womanizer, I can accept it. But when you make a character like Uhura act stupid, even when she isn't, that's when this stuff feels worth commenting on for me. Overall this could have been a lot worse than it was, which I know isn't very high praise. The bit with Spock and the explosive is very cool and worth giving this a watch for.
TOS S0209 - "Metamorphosis"
This episode is quietly great, I think. First off, I love the shimmery abstract blob used to represent the Companion. It may be a sort of obvious response to depicting a thing like the Companion, but I'm sure it would have made some people scratch their heads, and felt like a kind of creative risk, when this aired. But everything else about the set design on this episode feels top notch for TOS. This sound studio alien landscape feels like it has real depth and atmosphere. When Cochrane is "speaking" with the Companion outside of his house that is so in the style of Star Wars: Galaxies player housing, it feels like he's in an actual space. The plot of this one is simple, but it has drama and communicates its scifi ideas in a emotional way: the way Cochrane feels used or even violated by the Companion when the Enterprise crew suggest that it has been treating him as a lover, and they look at his self-conscious reaction as an irrational outburst which only makes him feel more uncomfortable. I think this is a relatable moment, one where the ideals of the main crew actually feel culturally alien and futuristic to humans in the 20th century. You get both sides I think. What is also good about this episode is how, for once, the stranded Enterprise crew meet someone on a planet who wants to help them get off it and back to exploring the galaxy. I don't feel good about how the woman scientist dies from a disease in this episode and is inhabited by the Companion. The ending plays this out like it's everyone getting what they wanted, but I think that scientist was mentioning during the opening that she was annoyed to have contracted a fatal illness because it was taking her away from important peace negotiations in some war on a planet; and her being stranded and her inevitable death on the asteroid with Cochrane and the Companion only happened because the Companion made it happen. So.... this woman dies and her body is puppetted by an alien while, presumably, some peace negotiations on a war-torn planet far away stall and fall apart? Fucked up....